Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a turbomachine blade and relative production method.
More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a method of producing a lightweight stator blade for a compressor or front fan of an aircraft turbine engine, to which use the following description refers purely by way of example.
Description of the Related Art
As is known, stator blades of aircraft turbine engine compressors substantially comprise a coupling root designed to fit and lock rigidly to the compressor hub or center blade mounting disk; an airfoil-shaped oblong member, which cantilevers from the coupling root, so as to cantilever radially outwards of the hub or blade mounting disk when the coupling root is fixed inside the hub or center blade mounting disk; and an upper coupling head, which is located at the distal end of the airfoil-shaped oblong member, i.e. at the opposite end to the coupling root, and is designed to fit and lock rigidly to the outer blade mounting ring of the compressor.
Having to withstand fairly severe mechanical stress and heat, the lower coupling root, the airfoil-shaped oblong member, and the upper coupling head of the blade are usually formed in one piece from a single block of high-strength metal, which is forged and then milled to shape the blade as required.
To reduce inertia and the overall weight of turbine engines, some aircraft turbine engine manufacturers have opted over the past few years to employ blades with hollow airfoil-shaped oblong members in parts of the engine, so as to drastically reduce the amount of metal needed to make the blade.
Patent Application US2006/039792 describes a method of producing a lightweight aircraft turbine engine blade.
Making a lightweight blade from a single block of metal, however, is an expensive, extremely painstaking, time-consuming job, due to the large amount of material the numeric-control milling machine has to remove to achieve the required shape of the piece.